


After the Storm

by eternaleponine



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is for children.  Natasha was never a child.  And yet...</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Mumford & Sons song [After the Storm](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mumfordsons/afterthestorm.html).

When the storm hits, we are nowhere near shelter. The rain pours down, icy drops that at first help cool our heated skin but eventually start to leach away all warmth, soaking through our suits, rivulets finding their way under collars and trickling down chests and backs. 

He stumbles, and I pull him up. I trip, and he returns the favor. We run hand in hand without realizing it for a few minutes, but we need our hands to balance as the ground grows slick so we let go. 

You can't catch a cold from being cold, but it can sure as hell mess you up when you're already beaten, bloodied, all reserves gone. 

We won. In theory, at least, we won the battle, but the war is far from over. The war will never be over. 

The water doesn't run hot enough to thaw me all the way. I huddle under blankets while he takes his turn, and we patch ourselves and each other up as best we can. None of the injuries are serious enough that we need to seek a hospital, but his ribs are cracked, I think, and I have a deep gash in one shoulder that pulls open every time I move. It needs stitches, but he's too shaky to do them, so we make do with bandages and hope.

"You need to—" he starts.

"I know." I try to fashion a sling, but it's hard to do one-handed, and finally I let him take over.

His touch lingers as he slips it over my head, and we look at each other. Just look, until one of us looks away and I honestly couldn't say whose eyes shift first, but maybe it's both of us at the same time. It wouldn't be the first time. 

"I'm going to see about food," he says.

"I'm not hungry," I reply. 

I'm not. My stomach is in knots and the thought of food is enough to set it roiling. I know I should eat anyway.

"I am." He's lying. He just needs to step away.

I shrug my good shoulder, and it's all the permission he needs. He shouldn't need permission at all. 

What neither of us is saying is that we could have died out there. Which is par for the course with the jobs that we do and the lives that we lead, but this time, this time it was too close for comfort and we both know why. 

He is my why.

I am his.

And where do you go from there?

*

He comes back with soup, and I have no idea where he got it, or what's in it, but I don't care, because it turns out I'm hungry after all. He sets a container in front of me, along with some bread, and sits as far away from me as the small space will allow. There's another room in this place, this bolt-hole hotel, but even though we can't look at each other, we can't let each other out of our periphery either. Not for long.

The food is gone and we don't move. Darkness is falling and we don't turn on the lights. We could blame exhaustion but that's not it. I hear him shift, finding a more comfortable position on the floor, and I wonder if he plans to stay there all night.

"When I die, burn me," he says. "I don't want to rot."

The words turn my stomach all over again, and I swallow bile. "Okay," I say.

The silence stretches.

"Tell someone else," I say. 

Because there's a chance, a good chance, that when he dies, I will too. If there was anything that today taught me, it was that. My hands are still shaking in the aftermath. I keep them clenched into fists and my fingers are aching, but what else can I do? 

"Who else would I tell?"

"Someone who cares." I force myself to stand, and pull off the sling. I need both hands free if I'm leaving, and I have to leave. I can't be in this room, listening to him breathe, listening to him say things that I don't want to hear.

He doesn't ask where I'm going. He doesn't tell me not to. He doesn't move at all, and maybe he just knows better or maybe it's symbolic. 

The streets in this part of the city aren't well-lit, but it doesn't matter because I'm well-armed. If anyone tries anything, they'll regret it. I just need to get away from everything, and by everything, I mean him. I need to think, except I don't want to because there's only one thing I can think about. One sudden, sickening realization that both of us had today, maybe not for the first time but for the first time, at least for me, that it really sunk in. 

We are going to die. 

We are mortal. Our lives will end. 

And there is every chance that one of us will die before the other. There is every possibility that one of us will have to let the other go. One of us will have to say goodbye. 

We all die alone in the end, but that doesn't mean that others don't have to watch. That doesn't mean that someone doesn't get left behind, just as alone or more so.

I never feared my own death. Not really. It was an inevitability, a foregone conclusion. The only questions were where, when, why, how. And I couldn't trouble myself with thinking too much about that. When I was gone, I was gone, and that was it. 

I'm Russian. I tend not to weep for these things. 

Or I was.

Today, I nearly took a bullet for him. Today, he pushed me out of the way when he saw something I didn't. Today, I realized that if I die, I leave him behind, and vice versa.

I need to walk away. I am compromised, and I need to end this before it ends one of us.

*

We avoid each other as best we can. I don't know what's going on in his head. I don't want to know. I tell myself that I don't care, that I can't care. Sometimes, for a few seconds or minutes, I can almost convince myself that it's true.

It doesn't matter that he's been the one constant in my life since I gave up everything I knew. It doesn't matter that he believed in me before anyone else, and more than anyone else, including myself. It doesn't matter that when I'm with him I am more and better than I am alone. 

I try. 

I do try.

For three days I try. We clean up loose ends, together and separately, and even though we don't speak we don't need to. We know each other's movements, each other's signals, each other's signs, down to the change in breathing over the comm link that we share and rarely use that means one of us has seen something, and get ready.

On the third day, it's raining again, and I'm on the street alone. I trip and land in the mud, on my knees and out of luck, because no matter how hard I try, I can't shake him. He is under my skin, a part of me, and that will never change. 

This, like death, is bigger than me. 

I look up, and if there are tears mixed in the rain that streams down my cheeks, who is there to see?

*

I receive a message on the fourth day. At first I think it's a notification of extraction, because all it contains is coordinates and the word SAFE, but it's not from S.H.I.E.L.D., it's from him. Which means I have to decide whether or not to go. It's not part of the job if he's labeled it safe, so I do have a choice.

I plug the coordinates into the GPS function, but they seem to land me more or less in the middle of nowhere. I realize it could be a trap, that someone could have him, could be holding him hostage and forcing him to draw me there. 

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

I follow the route it draws for me to the edge of the city, and keep walking. Pavement gives way to softer ground, to grass, and the sun peeks through the clouds. Ahead, there are spots of white, and it's only as I get closer that I realize that they are flowers. 

White blooms, opening like bells, like tulips, sort of, but with pointed petals. I pick one and tuck it behind my ear, and keep walking, because I have no sense of danger here. My guard isn't completely down; I'm not stupid. But maybe, for once, when something is supposed to be safe it actually is.

I climb a hill, and at the top I find him there. He's sitting back, his feet kicked out in front of him, his face turned up towards the sun for a moment, until he sees me and stands, takes half a step towards me. 

_I didn't know if you'd come._ It's written all over his face.

I take the flower from behind my ear and tuck it into a button hole on his shirt. _I'm here_.

He smiles crookedly, and holds out his hands like an offering. In them is a chain of flowers, a circle, a wreath. He's braided them together and I don't ask where he learned that but I can't help smiling at the thought that somewhere along the way in the life that he's led, he made a point to learn this useless skill. 

He lifts it up and sets it gingerly on my head like he expects it to fall apart, but it doesn't. I'm crowned with flowers now, pure white like I have never been. I expect it to feel wrong. This is not me, and I wouldn't have thought this was him.

Maybe it's not. But it's us, if you strip away everything else. 

When weapons are sheathed and blood washed clean, when all debts are canceled, this is what we are. This is who we can be. 

He takes my hands and looks at me, and I look back, gaze unwavering. There is a question in his eyes as his thumb strokes over the knuckles of my left hand. 

I nod. 

He breathes out, like he's been holding his breath for days, and maybe he has. Maybe we both have, since long before this mission. In the middle of nowhere, in a place that is beautiful despite all of the horrors we have witnessed here, I learn a lesson I have fought against for a very long time. 

He lifts my hand to his lips, presses a kiss to the third finger, holds on tight.

We are mortal. We will die, and maybe one of us will leave the other. Maybe we'll have to say goodbye, and maybe it will hurt more than either of us can imagine. But that's not now, and we can hope it won't be today or tomorrow or any time soon.

I look at him, take a breath, make a choice that I never thought I would, a silent vow. It's a promise I intend to keep. 

I'm not afraid.


End file.
